Taiwan’s elections are about more than China

With only a few days to go before Taiwan’s election on January 13th, campaigning is furious. Across the island-state, presidential candidates are shaking hands at temples and markets by day and leading boisterous rallies at night. Voters are turning out to hear them by the thousand, waving flags and chanting slogans. Much is at stake—even if the issues are not quite as existential as the candidates claim. Taiwan’s two biggest parties, the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), have respectively framed the vote as a choice between “democracy and autocracy” and between “war and peace”.

The future of Taiwan’s relations with the mainland have dominated the campaign—it always does. Yet that question will not straightforwardly decide who becomes Taiwan’s next president. That is clear at the rallies, where voters talk as much about domestic concerns such as wages and housing as geopolitics. Nearly half of Taiwan’s voters are concerned about the possibility of a war with China in the next five years, according to a survey by Commonwealth, a Taiwanese business magazine. Yet voters’ biggest priority is economic development, outweighing both national security and cross-strait relations, the same survey found. This prioritising of economic issues is even stronger among voters under 40.

That helps explain why the race is so close. Taiwan’s voters have traditionally split along identity lines. Those in favour of Taiwanese sovereignty sided with the DPP while those who were proud of being Chinese, and wanted closer relations with the mainland, voted for the KMT. If the upcoming vote was determined by that split it would probably yield an easy DPP win. More than 60% of Taiwan’s population today identifies as Taiwanese, not Chinese. But polls show the DPP ahead by only a few points, with just over a third of the vote. The KMT has another third. A newcomer, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which is campaigning mainly on bread-and-butter issues, is backed by about a quarter of voters. It is especially popular among younger Taiwanese, most of whom identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese—yet do not feel beholden to the DPP because of that sentiment.

At a TPP event in Taoyuan, a city in the north of the island, 24-year-old Zack Song holds up a poster supporting Ko Wen-je, the party’s founder and presidential candidate. Mr Song, who works in air-conditioning installation, previously voted for Taiwan’s DPP president, Tsai Ing-wen. But after eight years of DPP rule, he and his peers are struggling with inflation and expensive housing. He notes that many young Taiwanese emigrate because local salaries are too low—and adds that Mr Ko offers him hope for change. Another TPP supporter, 40-year-old Issac Chen, says he is tired of the two traditional parties’ bickering over independence v unification with the mainland. “We’ve been watching that for 20 years. We’re sick of it,” he says. Mr Chen’s wife is a soldier; he cares about security. But he wants a president who will be less antagonistic towards China than he says Ms Tsai is.

Many KMT supporters make a more direct link between cross-strait policy and Taiwan’s economic future. The opposition party’s presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, has pledged to revive a cross-strait service-trade agreement that would open Taiwan’s service sector to mainland Chinese. The agreement was halted by Taiwan after it sparked mass protests in 2014. But trade and dialogue with China remain popular with the KMT’s conservative base. At a KMT rally in Keelung, a port city in northern Taiwan, Wang Gui-chu, a 65-year-old pensioner who used to work in eyeglass manufacturing, says the DPP used the China threat to win elections but did not improve daily life for ordinary people. The DPP criticised the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement (ECFA), a cross-strait free-trade pact signed by a former KMT president, Ma Ying-jeou, she points out; but kept it in place once in power. “It’s just a talking-point. They say everything is because of the Communist Party. The Communist Party is not that evil,” she says, adding that China buys many products from Taiwan and employs many Taiwanese.

Not all KMT supporters are so sanguine. A 40-year-old at the KMT rally, surnamed Yan, says he used to be a DPP supporter when he was younger and “hot-blooded”. But Mr Yan now worries that China’s economic slowdown will push Xi Jinping, the country’s president, to be more aggressive towards Taiwan. Taiwan’s best bet is to appease China with friendly dialogue, he says, which is why he is going to vote for either the KMT or TPP.

At a DPP rally in New Taipei, the exurbs of the capital, Cody Chen, a 30-year-old who works in finance, says she will vote for the ruling party because it is “most able to resist China’s pressure”. As China’s economy slows, it makes increasingly little sense to push integration with it, she says. As for the threat of war, that will exist no matter who wins the presidency: “When there is a bully or bad neighbour, even if you don’t resist at all, he will still bully you.” Taiwan should show its willingness to fight—which will raise the chance of other countries supporting it in the event of a Chinese invasion, she says. Yet Ms Chen also admits that many of her peers are not voting for the DPP this year.

Whoever wins the presidency is unlikely to do so with an overall majority. The parliamentary elections happening on the same day could also end with no party gaining a majority and, after eight years of unified dpp rule, perhaps lead to different parties controlling the assembly and executive. That would threaten gridlock on big contested issues such as defence spending and cross-straits trade. The election results will offer a snapshot of where Taiwan is headed. But the furious debates on Taiwan’s future will continue.■